This fall, our Alumnus in the spotlight is Peter Wolter, Senior Systems Administrator at Foremost Farms USA. Peter was initially drawn to EBI by the recommendation of his sister, and arrived on campus in the fall of 1988. Graduating in 1991 with Academic Honors, he continued his education at Christian Life College in Mount Prospect, Ill., and graduated Magna Cum Laude, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in Pastoral Ministry. His Bachelor's Degree in hand, he prayed and felt he was not to enter the ministry as a full-time occupation at that time. So, he stayed involved in his local church and managed a McDonald's Restaurant for little over a year until he eventually started a career in Information Technology (IT) in 1995.

Peter's first introduction to the IT world was as a Technical Support Professional supporting Windows 95 as a Microsoft Launch Partner. On June 6, 1997, he was hired by Foremost Farms USA as a Technology Solution Specialist at the help desk. Foremost Farms USA is a company out of Baraboo, Wisconsin that produces 10% of the cheese consumed in the United States. Peter gradually began to move up within the company, from the Help Desk to Systems Administrator and finally to his current position. His duties include implementing and administering an environment with 250 servers, hardware administration, project management, and troubleshooting of all server equipment.

In addition to his work, Peter has stayed involved in his local church in various capacities and was credentialed as an Ordained Minister on September 21, 2003 by Living Hope Church in cooperation with the Fellowship of Christian Assemblies. Peter says of his time at Elim:

EBI prepared me to be a person of honesty, integrity, and good work ethics. I have struggled at times feeling as if I should be in full-time ministry, but I would pray and God would tell me He had me where He wanted me. So I got busy serving Him through my local church as a volunteer and worked in IT to provide for my family. In these years in IT, God has pruned and developed my character, taught me how to work with people, tested my loyalty and perseverance, helped me learn leadership, and changed my attitude about doing work 'as unto the Lord.'

"As unto the Lord" is truly the attitude that he has adopted towards his work, and EBI witnessed this first hand last year. Foremost Farms USA was in the process of refreshing their IT equipment, which meant replacing their servers with newer, more powerful models. Knowing that the cooperative had donated PC's to non-profit organizations in the past, Peter approached the Infrastructure Manager and asked him if they could donate the old servers to EBI if he wiped off the data on his own time. He was approved to do so, and the cleaned servers were sent to EBI, filling a huge need in Elim's IT department. Peter explains, "I saw a good deal of redemption in my years spent in IT right there in that shipment."

As an EBI alumnus in the business world, Peter shared the following advice: Serve God right where you are. Ask Him what He would be pleased to do through you in the middle of everyday life where you work—and get busy doing that. Find out what God has prepared in advance for you to do (Eph 2:10). Don't underestimate the witness you have for Christ in doing excellent work as unto the Lord. 'Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving' (Colossians 3:23-24). I am hoping my story inspires others to think and pray about how God might use them to bless Elim as well. We learned so much there—in and out of the classroom. Now is our time to look back, remember God's blessing to us through Elim and ask Him if there is some way we could be a blessing back to Elim; whether with money, our time, our prayers, through donating something, or by some other means."

Peter and his wife, Jenny, happily serve God in Wisconsin and have three children, Christina, David, and Jonathan.